• Company news

Design challenge for students working at home

Since 2016 James Fisher Marine Services (JFMS) has been offering sixth form students from coastal areas around the UK 20-day work placements as part of the Coastal Energy Internship Programme backed by Vattenfall and Scottish Power Renewables. However, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 meant everything had to change.

With everyone working from home and schools closed, the JFMS operations and technical manager, Roger Moore instead created project resources for students to work on at home. He set the interns the challenge of designing an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) as part of a virtual iteration of the programme designed to promote awareness and interest in offshore wind. 

The initiative was a great success and two students from Ulverston went on to achieve prestigious CREST gold awards (run by British Science Association).  

One of the CREST winners, Alexander Walters, a sixth-former from Ulverston Victoria High School says:

Completing this project allowed me to develop a much deeper understanding of some of the challenges an engineer may face on a daily basis.’

In December, the JFMS team received a letter of thanks from the Ogden Trust which originally developed the Coastal Energy Internship Programme to stimulate an uptake in interest in physics post-16.